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Guide

What is OpenClaw and Why It Matters

February 5, 2026 3 min read By ekuri
openclawai-agentsgetting-started

AI Assistants Have a Problem

Most AI chatbots are stateless. You ask a question, get an answer, and the conversation disappears. They can't remember what you told them yesterday. They can't set a reminder for tomorrow. They can't look something up on the web and act on it.

That's fine for quick questions. But if you want an AI that actually assists you — one that knows your preferences, manages tasks, and takes actions on your behalf — you need something more.

Enter OpenClaw

OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent framework. Think of it as the brain and body for your personal AI assistant. It takes a language model like Claude and gives it:

  • Persistent memory — your AI remembers past conversations and learns your preferences
  • Reminders — set time-based reminders that your AI will deliver when they're due
  • Web search — your AI can search the web for current information in real-time
  • Tool use — a flexible system for giving your AI new capabilities
  • Session management — switch between different conversation contexts

How ekuri Uses OpenClaw

When you sign up for ekuri, we spin up a dedicated Cloudflare container just for you. Inside that container, OpenClaw runs as a gateway service — always on, always ready.

You connect to it via Telegram. Send a message, and OpenClaw processes it through Claude, checks your memory for context, decides if it needs to search the web or use any tools, and sends back a response. All within your isolated container.

You (Telegram) → ekuri → Your Container → OpenClaw → Claude
                                              ↓
                                    Memory, Web Search, Tools

Why Open Source Matters

OpenClaw is MIT-licensed. The code is on GitHub. Anyone can read it, audit it, or run it on their own hardware.

This matters because your AI assistant has access to sensitive information — your conversations, your preferences, your reminders. With closed-source alternatives, you're trusting a black box. With OpenClaw, you can verify exactly what's happening with your data.

For ekuri users, this means:

  • Transparency — you can inspect exactly what code runs inside your container
  • No vendor lock-in — if you outgrow ekuri, export your data and self-host OpenClaw
  • Community improvements — bug fixes and features from the open-source community benefit everyone

Getting Started

The easiest way to try OpenClaw is through ekuri — sign up, connect Telegram, and you're chatting with your own AI assistant in under a minute. No terminal, no config files, no Docker commands.

If you're technical and want to self-host, check out the OpenClaw repository on GitHub. The README walks through setup on any Linux machine, including Raspberry Pi.

What Can You Do With It?

Here are some things ekuri users do with their OpenClaw-powered assistants:

  • Daily briefings — "Every morning at 8am, summarize the top tech news"
  • Research — "Search for the latest papers on transformer architectures and summarize the key findings"
  • Memory — "Remember that my flight to Berlin is on March 15th" → later: "When is my Berlin flight?"
  • Writing — "Help me draft a professional email declining this meeting invitation"
  • Learning — "Explain quantum computing like I'm 15, then quiz me on it"

The key difference from a regular chatbot: your assistant remembers. Context builds over time. It gets more useful the more you use it.

Want to try it? Sign up for ekuri and get your own AI assistant running in under a minute.

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